Asian American Studies Brown Bag Seminar

Japanese American WWII Forced Removal and German and U.S. Refugee Policies in the Era of President Trump

In the context of heightened nationalism and misogyny, making global connections between and within struggles is imperative. In her forthcoming book, Race, Nation, War: Japanese American Forced Removal, Public Policy and National Security (Routledge, 2019), Dr. Ayanna Yonemura connects Japanese Americans’ WWII incarceration to U.S. President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel and their refugee policies. The controversies surrounding these leaders and their policies demonstrate that gender ideologies and the ideas of Euro-American cultural superiority which impacted Japanese Americans’ liberty persist today. Paradoxically, human rights discourse is central to 21st century U.S. and German national identities and to narratives which depict these countries as superior to non-Euro-American and non-Christian refugees, yet as the power of overtly racist politicians has increased, national narratives have exposed European and American contradictions.

Ayanna Yonemura, Ph.D., author of Race, Nation, War: Japanese American Forced Removal, Public Policy and National Security (Routledge, forthcoming in 2019), is the recipient of two Fulbright Fellowships and a U.S. Civil Liberties Public Education Fund National Fellowship. She has taught in Europe, Africa, Asia and California including a comparative African American-Asia American course for UC Davis’ Asian American Studies Department which will be offered again in Fall 2019. Her research focuses on race, public policy and urban planning from a feminist perspective.

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